It’s mysteeeerioooooousss!

In a well-aimed marketing decision, BeadsDirect sent me an email advertising that they had Mystery Bead Hampers available in limited stocks…

They had me at the name, really – Mystery Bead Hamper! Mystery Bead Hamper. I did in fact wander round the house intoning that for a while. Even better, it had substance – a surprise package where I knew I would like the contents? Excellent.

I ordered one, in due course it arrived. I smiled at the shinies.

It was advertised as containing overstock and remainders – it mostly consisted of strings of semi-precious stones, along with a few large pendants, some findings, a set of needles, a tube of Delicas, a card of high-quality beading thread, and a large packet of silver-painted plastic beads shaped like stars, hearts and butterflies. Those last might sound tacky, but they look nice and I expect them to be incredibly versatile. They were held in a nice sturdy bead box with compartments and carry handles.

The semi-precious stones were split into two colour categories – one section had peach, orange, mustard and crystal, the other had green, blue and grey (with hematite/hemalyke).

The only thing I wish was that they’d included an inventory list of everything in the selection. I spent a while going through the website to compare and matched up most things easily, but because they included remainders and because colour of stones can vary quite a lot, there were a couple of strands I couldn’t identify. They were peachy-orange round beads – the smaller ones pinker, the larger ones oranger. I decided they were probably golden/honey jade… but more on that later.